Hard Beat

I’m done.

The buzz I’ve lived my life by is gone. I don’t feel a single zap of it, and the last time I did was telling Rylee that I was going to fight for what was mine. For Beaux. The inexplicable draw to the hard beat has died for me. I stare at the electronic boards, a man who finally found what was missing in his life only to lose it before he could fully recognize it. The destinations blur before my eyes, running together, and I have no idea where I’m going, what I’m doing, but there is one thing that is crystal clear.

It takes me a second to realize my cell is still turned off, that I was so fixated on getting to the meeting and then with the aftermath that I never turned it on. When I do, texts from Rafe come in a flurry, and I know that he’s found out somehow about Beaux’s death. As much as I don’t want to talk to him, don’t want to share my misery, I dial and wait for him to pick up.

“Jesus Christ, Tanner. I had no idea,” he answers. But his words aren’t enough for me. What did he have no idea about? That she was killed in the embassy bombing or that she was a spy?

“Did you know?” I grit the question out, needing to know more than ever if he knew about the setup, was in on it. When silence hangs on the line, my instinct tells me that he doesn’t. He’s not a good enough liar to play me that well, and if he was, he’s not going to tell me anyway. He remains silent for a moment. “Put Pauly on the story.”

“What… what’s going —”

“Pauly deserves it. Give him a shot to make the headline.”

“Talk to me, Tanner. What are you —”

“Thank you,” I say, cutting him off again, my eyes still trying to focus on the digitized cities on the screen in front of me. I don’t know where I’m going, but the only caveat is that there won’t be a desert. “This time it’s for real.”

“What is? What are you talking about?”

“I quit.”

Chapter 31

One week later

S

he’s so beautiful, it hurts sometimes to look at her.

I glance up from the bed to see Beaux standing at the edge of it, hair down, eyes on me, a soft smile on her face.

“Tanner,” she whispers as she sits down beside me. The mattress springs squeak, and we both laugh at the memory. She leans over, her hair tickles my face as it falls down to my chest, but I forget all about it the minute her lips brush mine. Her kiss tastes like her, like everything I’ve ever wanted, like forever.

I startle awake from the dream. Just like I do every morning, every night. Every time I close my eyes. And the vivid imagery of it and the way it leaves me feeling is so real, so tangible, that it takes me a minute to remember she’s gone.

And then the ache comes roaring back with a vengeance. The pain still radiates in my chest, the grief still weighs down my soul, the loss still runs my life.

This is my good morning. Has been every day since she’s been gone.

I walk down Main Street through the two-bit town I’m playing recluse in. The plane touched down in Billings, Montana, and I drove until I couldn’t see from exhaustion and found myself in this tiny little town of Freeman, population one thousand.

The bartender at Ginger’s greets me by name as I walk in, and my beer is pulled from the tap and slid alongside the shot of whiskey that she’s had waiting here every day since I’ve been in town. It’s easier to numb yourself with alcohol. While the drunken haze makes the memories that much sweeter, it also makes your heart that much more hardened.

“Hey, handsome,” Ginger says.

“Hi.” I nod my head and then lower it, keep to myself, like I have since day one. My mind’s still a mess, and I need this solitude and the noise in my head simultaneously to come to grips with everything.

“So let me guess, you’re nursing a heartbreak?” I cringe when she starts to pry, because I keep coming here because no one has asked me shit besides the general curiosity questions. And now she just went and ruined it.

“Something like that,” I murmur into my beer, my eyes looking up to catch the baseball game on the television on the opposite wall. My lack of interest in any conversation should be more than apparent.

“I have a few ideas how we can cure that for you,” she says, and I can hear the smile on her face even though I’m not looking at her.

“Whatever you’re looking for, I assure you I’m not him,” I tell her, and immediately startle as my mind shifts back to the first time I met Beaux and said something similar. I lift the beer, my eyes focusing on the bottom of the glass as I drain it before sliding some cash across the bar top, scooting my chair out, and walking from the bar.

“You okay?”

“Yes, Rylee. I’m getting there.”

“I just wish there was something I could do or say to —”

“There’s nothing to say, Bubs,” I tell her as I sit on the steps of the back porch of the little cabin I’ve rented on the edge of the woods and lift a beer to my lips. It’s amazing how cash can get you anything, including anonymity and seclusion. “I just need some time to sort my shit out, you know?”

“No, I don’t know. I’m worried about you. I’ve been through this before,” she says, referring to her fiancé who died years ago, “so I understand this more than most people do, but I didn’t take off to the edge of nowhere and disappear. I needed people, Tanner. Needed to be around people to cope.”

“And I don’t. I need to reevaluate my life. The things that I thought were priorities just might not be anymore, and that’s a tough thing for a man to come to terms with,” I say, not trying to be a martyr but at the same time finding it hard to focus on the outside world when the one around me has crashed down. “Who knows, maybe I’ll write that book I always wanted to write. You never know what might happen.”